A Time For Love And A Time For Hate

The author of Ecclesiastes uses much of the content in what is now called the third chapter to clarify that certain contrasting pairs of activities or emotional states have their own respective relevance to different scenarios in life.  The first verse of Ecclesiastes 3 says that there is a time for every activity, although it is not speaking of every manner of engaging in activities, or else it would mean that there is a time to murder or rape, among other things.  Its pairs emphasize contrasts like killing and healing (Ecclesiastes 3:3) or carrying out war or pursuing peace (3:8), all of which can actually be conducted in ways that contradict the commands found earlier and later in the Bible--or in ways consistent with its commands.

There is a time to kill, but not a time to murder.  There is time for sex, but not a time for adultery or rape (though sex is not directly addressed in the chapter).  There is a time to love and a time to hate (3:8), but never a time to love irrationality and sin or to hate truth and justice.  This would contradict even what the author of Ecclesiastes says in chapter 12 about how obeying God is the duty of humanity, not to mention Mosaic Law and the New Testament commands.  Even a single circumstance that calls for hatred, though, refutes the evangelical and secular idea that hatred is universally evil or at least destructive enough to avoid at all costs.  With this in mind, anyone who reads Ecclesiastes and thinks about the third chapter thoroughly without making assumptions can see that this is actually an unbiblical stance.

Ecclesiastes 3 does not specify what the love and hate contextually encouraged in the chapter are actually directed towards, but other passages in the Bible make it clear that God both loves all of humanity and hates some humans for their sins, especially for sins involving unjust violence (Psalm 5:5-6, Proverbs 11:5), the most intense expressions of which go far beyond quick, painless murder.  It nonetheless affirms that hatred itself is not the automatically vile, useless, unjust thing so many Christians have assumed it is due to emotional dislike and popular but vague ideas.  Ironically, so many people hate hatred because of mistaken slippery slope fallacies or the false equivalence of something like racism or misandry/misogyny with a hatred of the morally inferior.

There are far more passages in the Bible demonstrating that some forms of hatred directed at some people, not just some ideas, are not immoral.  The aforementioned parts of Psalms and Proverbs convey this.  Leviticus 20:23 and still other verses do the same.  They speak of God's just hatred of specific people, and with God being the only metaphysical anchor for moral obligations, hatred cannot be evil if he himself harbors it.  Hating someone for a nonsinful deed or for being born with physical characteristics they cannot change is evil by Biblical standards, and Jesus condemns so much as being angry without cause (Matthew 5:22), meaning that hatred without cause would be am even more severe error.  Anyone who reads the Bible can still see that within its own internally consistent moral system, there is conditional allowance for hatred to the point pf Ecclesiastes 3:8 saying there is even a valid time for it.